Short version:

Click on one of the providers (social networks) in the left corner of the toolbar (in the upper section of the window) to download your contact data.

Once the data is there, you need to tell ContactsSyncer what to do with it. Click on one of the five export buttons to load the data into either your Mac OS address book or save it as Outlook contacts, as an MS Excel document, as a vCard file or an CSV file.

if you have 7 minutes: watch this youtube video.

or, if you prefer to read things up:

Click on one of the providers (social networks) in the left corner of the toolbar (in the upper section of the window).

You might have to enter your login credentials. So make sure you have them ready.

You might also have to tell your provider that you think it is okay for ContactsSyncer to read your contacts data. You can always change your mind about that later as all providers allow you to control which apps can access your data.

If you use the app for the first time, you will be asked if you grant access to your contacts app. As ContactsSyncer needs access to your contacts (in order to compare the providers data with the data in contacts) you have to grant it. If you deny access to your contacts, you won’t be able to use ContactsSyncer unless you revert your decision by granting access to contacts via your computers system preferences->security.

ContactsSyncer will proceed to download your contacts and display them in the listbox. The free version will download 50 contacts only, so please consider purchasing a license in the Mac App store ($9.99) if you need more. Once your contacts are shown in the listbox, it is your turn to decide what you want to do with them – either import them into your Mac OS address book (contacts.app), save it as Outlook contacts, as an MS Excel document or as a vCard file. Just click on the corresponding toolbar button in the upper right-hand part of the window.

What you see in the right part of the listbox after the contacts name is what ContactsSyncer plans to do with that record when you import it into your address book. It might have found a match in your address book (it does that by checking the first and last name), in which case it will display the update icon (if the data differs) or a green check icon if the data is already the same. Here is where you can tell contactssyncer to change it’s plan, simply by clicking on the gear icon. You can reassign the found match to a different record in your address book, or tell contactssyncer to create a new record (even though it found a match), which comes in handy if for example the “Peter Miller” from Facebook is actually a different “Peter Miller” than the one you already have your address book. Remember that you still have to import the data to make it actually happen.

In the detail view on the right-hand part you’ll see all the data the provider gave us, and also when the record was last updated in your address book. You’ll also see the differences ContactsSyncer found in the downloaded data vs. the matching record in your address book. ContactsSyncer compares all fields except the pictures.

When you import your contacts into your address book you can decide what address book group you want your contacts to be in. You can also assign a category when you import into MS Outlook. It might, for example, make sense to have an address book group or an MS Outlook category called “facebook friends”. But that’s entirely your call, you can also skip this step for now and change the data later in the address book or in Outlook if you like.

If you don’t want to import all of the records but just a selection you can just select them in the listbox and click “selected only” in the import dialog.

ContactsSyncer will never delete data. For example let’s say, you may have someone with a mobile number but without a picture in your address book, and ContactsSyncer updates this person with data from Facebook (with a picture but without the mobile number) – you’ll now have a contact with both the picture and the mobile number.

You can search for a person in the listbox by typing the beginning part of the last name into the search field in the very right-hand part of the toolbar.

Just two more things:

Some of your contacts might have chosen not to reveal their correct name to a provider. That’s pretty common, especially on Twitter. This would be a problem if, for example, your friend Mary Johnson decided to call herself “Mary Jay” on Twitter, but you already have a contact in your address book with her correct name Mary Johnson which you want ContactsSyncer to update. Here is how you can explain to Contactssyncer how to deal with this: Click on the little gear-icon in the contacts row in the list, and choose “assign” from the contextual menu. You can now “show” ContactSyncer which entry in your address book is the actual match. ContactsSyncer will now update that record (except for the name) when you import the data (instead of creating a new “Mary Jay”-record which is what would have happened if you had skipped that step) – and even remember that when you do your next import.

To obtain your data from Google+ you need to tweak your Google+-settings once, because Google+ requires you to tell them which circles data can be read by a particular app. If you don’t do that Contactssyncer won’t be able to download any contacts. Took us a while to figure this out…This is what you need to do:

1. Log in into your Google+ account with your web browser.

2. From the popup menu in the upper left corner (“home”) select “settings”.

3. Scroll down until you see the button “manage apps and activities”. Click it.

4. In the “ContactsSyncer” line click on the pen icon (which only shows up when you hover with your mouse pointer over it).

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5. Click “advanced connection settings”

6. Select the circles you want ContactsSyncer to see.

7. Click ok. That’s it!

Privacy statement:

ContactsSyncer will not save or use any of your data in any conceivable way. You may also want to read the privacy statement.

The usual disclaimer:

Disclaimer of Warranties. ContactsSyncer.com disclaims to the fullest extent authorized by law any and all other warranties, whether express or implied, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of title, non-infringement, quiet enjoyment, integration, merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

This app refrains from pestering you with ads or obtrusive “rate us, rate us!!” dialogs, which doesn’t mean it can do without your ratings, so please consider rating or even reviewing the app in the Mac App Store. Thanks!

Got more questions? Check out the FAQ and
please don’t hesitate to contact me with questions, bug reports, rants and the likes.